After 40 Years, Star Trek 'Won't Die'

Synopsis: Presented in special collector's edition version, the thrilling adventures of the crew of the starship Enterprise continue as a renegade Vulcan hijacks the massive ship, sending Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew on a journey to uncover the innermost secrets of the universe.

Credit: Paramount

It seems
like the TV show that never dies.

Forty years
ago a science fiction show debuted on television with a paltry budget and a
bold mission to go where no one had gone before.

That show,
of course, was Star Trek, which sent Captain James T. Kirk (played by
the now iconic William Shatner) and his Starship Enterprise crew on a voyage to
a final frontier. Created by Gene Roddenberry and billed as a 'Wagon Train to
the Stars,' Star Trek debuted on Sept. 8, 1966 on a five-year mission
that is as entrenched in the American lexicon as apple pie and baseball (both
of which have popped up in episodes at one time or another, in fact).

"It's so
American because in America we integrate people into one," says NASA astronaut
and Trek fan Mike Fincke of the show, adding that Roddenberry's concept of
people rising above their differences to explore space can be seen in the
International Space Station (ISS). "Gene Roddenberry had a nice vision that I
think we, on the space station, are encapsulating. Did he create that
environment?...There's all kinds of fun arguments that people can make."

Exploration
aside, was it Kirk's endless womanizing and torn-shirt bravado that cemented
the show's cult status when it went into syndication? Or was it unending
bickering between Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest
Kelley), and the tough themes the crew dealt with?

Maybe Star
Trek was a sign of changing times. The show aired the first interracial kiss -
between Kirk and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) in Plato's Stepchildren - and
uttered the first televised "Hell" - from Kirk in The City on the Edge of
Forever. While groundbreaking in the 1960s, such things seem tame given
what's on the tube today.

"They've
always managed to be topical, all the way from race relations in the 1960s to
the end of the Cold War (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)," says
Fincke, who spoke to actor Scott Bakula - the latest Starship Enterprise
captain Jonathan Archer - from orbit during his Expedition 9 mission to the ISS
in 2004. "It serves as a parable for human behavior by taking subjects in a
fantastic sense so we can discuss it close to home."

Star Trek's
final original series episode aired in June 1969. One month later, NASA's
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon while
their fellow crewmate Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit.

After four
decades of Star Trek, the show's legacy has spawned ten feature films
-soon to be eleven - and sired no less than four spin-off television series and
an animated show. And let's not forget the countless convention, novels, comic
books, models and other merchandise that still feed rabid fans even after the
last series - Star Trek: Enterprise - was canceled in 2005. The demise
of Enterprise, due to dismal ratings that no write-in campaign could
spare, ended 18 years of continuous Trek TV since 1987 premiere of The Next
Generation.

But the
effect of Star Trek has reached beyond science fiction and into science fact.

NASA's
first space shuttle, a prototype for landing tests, was named Enterprise in
honor of the legendary starship after a massive fan campaign flooded the White
House with letters. The orbiter made its first flights in February 1977.
Roddenberry himself reached space after death when his ashes were launched
aboard NASA's Columbia orbiter in 1992.

British
entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has even named the first suborbital vehicle in
his Virgin Galactic spaceliner fleet to carry paying thrill-seekers to the edge
of space the VSS Enterprise, though it has yet to fly.

During its
lifetime, Star Trek featured many real-life astronauts like Fincke - who
appeared in Enterprise's final episode with fellow astronaut Terry Virts
- on its various series. The experience, Fincke says, was both exhilarating and
eye-opening.

"You sit
there on the bridge and you say 'Wow, this is the bridge of a starship,' and
you actually look and it's all smoke and mirrors," Fincke says. "The buttons
don't really work. Any spacecraft I'm on, the shuttle, Soyuz, the International
Space Station, you don't really want to touch buttons unless you know how they
work."

But despite
Enterprise's end, Star Trek is undergoing a resurgence of
sorts. The cable channel G4TV refitted the original series into Star Trek
2.0, where viewers add live commentary, catch episode trivia in real-time
and trade character stock on the Spock Market. Meanwhile, director J.J. Abrams,
creator of TV's Lost and Alias, is drawing up plans for the
eleventh Trek film - rumored to be a prequel to the original series - and the
Christie's auction house in New York will host a memorabilia bonanza in October
for the show's 40th anniversary.

"Star Trek
won't die because there is that interest," Fincke says. "It touches a
fundamental nerve in human beings, especially Americans, because we're pioneers
and explorers...all these things that are the good parts of our country, and Star
Trek captures that in a glorious way and gives us a picture towards the
future."

Tariq joined Purch's Space.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Google+, Twitter and on Facebook.